1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of media communications, and, more particularly, to a Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP) processing component that performs one or more audio processing tasks during an RTP-based communication system between two communication endpoints.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP) is an Internet-standard protocol for the transport of real-time data, including audio and video. RTP is used in virtually all Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) architectures, for videoconferencing, media-on-demand, and other applications. RTP can be used over multicast or unicast network services. RTP is an end-to-end transport protocol that provides services such as payload type identification, sequence numbering, time stamping, lost packet detection, timing reconstruction, and delivery monitoring. When RTP is used to stream video, a video server can maintain session states in order to correlate requests with a stream. Unlike the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) that is basically an asymmetric protocol where a client issues requests and a server responds, RTP allows both a video server and client to issue requests to the other.
Conventional implementations of RTP can establish full duplex audio streams between a video server and a caller, where the streams are transmitted over an Internet-protocol (IP) network through a VOIP gateway. During transmission, RTP audio can be compressed, decompressed, packetized, depacketized, and otherwise processed. These processing activities consume CPU cycles, network bandwidth, and utilize Input/Output ports of numerous computing devices of the IP network through which the audio is conveyed. Because RTP is a real-time protocol where packet transfer rates for audio packets of approximately 20 milliseconds between sender and receiver can be necessary, timely delivery and processing of the streamed audio can be essential.
Using conventional techniques, resource scarcity is common at the server and the client endpoints participating in the RTP communication. Intermittent resource shortfalls can result in quality compromises that can be perceived at either end of the transmission. A technique is needed that permits clients and video servers to utilize the RTP in a fashion where resource shortfalls can be gracefully accommodated.